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Primary education

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Original poster

'we said thanks to God today mummy!' Really??

332 replies

unexpectediteminbaggingarea · 22/10/2012 17:55

Apparently a 'special lady' came and told my son and his class that God gave them a special gift so they should all say thank you to him. And they did.

Does this kind of shit go on everywhere? It's not a church school. I am an athiest. My son, aged 4, is now apparently not. He says that, thinking about it, he now thinks God is real and the reason you can't see him is because he 'lives in a different country, maybe London'.

I'm actually quite pissed off about it (not the London bit, that was funny), but if it's what happens everywhere or is some kind of statutory thing I suppose I'll have to suck it up. If it's not I may write to the head.

Although I do think more time on geography and less time on God might be better for DS Grin .

OP posts:
LeeCoakley · 23/10/2012 19:35

I didn't know that. Our town council announced it was keeping them so I thought it was a new thing all over.

LeeCoakley · 23/10/2012 19:39

The discussion aspect is good but you can't actually do that in the middle of a prayer. Again it's the taking part which is the problem.

Pyrrah · 23/10/2012 19:39

I don't think DD is stupid at all - she told me that her teacher was wrong because she said God made it rain whereas it was dark clouds that made it rain, not bad for 3.

I know that schools aren't secular - I sat on a SACRE for 4 years - so I don't complain to the school. Instead I'm a member of the NSS and BHA and campaign for change. Doesn't mean I can't object.

Pyrrah · 23/10/2012 19:43

Very few people are aware that there is zero historical evidence for Jesus or the similarities between the Isis, Mithras and Jesus myths, or that the Gospels are not contempory but written well after the time that Jesus supposedly existed. So, they believe they are in some sense fact by default.

seeker · 23/10/2012 19:44

So if the prayers and Christian worship at school don't matter and doesn't make any difference, why are Christians so very reluctant to let them go?

exoticfruits · 23/10/2012 19:47

I have no idea-in answer to seeker.

Wallison · 23/10/2012 19:50

I don't think the atheists on this thread are saying that they want their children to be atheists otherwise they would disown them - at least that is not what I think, speaking as one. All that I object to is children being told to pray or the Xtianity being presented as fact trusted adults in an academic setting. When my son came home from school saying that he believed God created the world, I felt like he'd been 'got at' and that his natural state had been messed around with. Just think if it were a different religion to Xtianity that was being promoted in this way - would you be happy if your child came home from school and told you that s/he was now a Jew, or a Muslim or whatever because the someone in assembly had told him/her that that is how things are?

GrimmaTheNome · 23/10/2012 19:55

I really don't think this happens-unless maybe it is a church school. It is all to do with faith-there are no facts.

exotic -we hear it time and time again on MN, in the context of non-faith schools. Maybe its not always what the teacher meant to convey but its what the child has taken in. The collective worship part also has the implicit assumption of the reality of God running through it - why pray to something that might or might not be there? The hymns that are used run heavily on the Creator God theme (I don't mean creationist per se) 'all things bright and beautiful', 'who put the colours in the rainbow' and their ilk. DDs primary was on the whole moderate, but the class assemblies were all nice non-religious presentations (exactly as they should be) but with a 'let us pray' and a hymn tacked on the end with not the slightest mitigation of the implicit reality of god.

exoticfruits · 23/10/2012 19:57

would you be happy if your child came home from school and told you that s/he was now a Jew, or a Muslim or whatever because the someone in assembly had told him/her that that is how things are?

I would be very surprised if they did anything because someone told them that was the way things were- it isn't the way they were brought up.

Wallison · 23/10/2012 20:00

Ah right, so my problem isn't that my son is being told to be a Xtian by the school - it's more that I just haven't brought him up right. I see.

exoticfruits · 23/10/2012 20:02

Exactly! Get him to question everything-there are no holy grails. Start by questioning you-there are a lot of DCs who seem to just take what mummy says without any discussion and reasoning.

exoticfruits · 23/10/2012 20:03

Politely of course.

Wallison · 23/10/2012 20:06

I think you maybe misunderstood my tone. I am actually quite pissed off with you. I don't know if you meant to be rude but that is exactly how it came across.

Wallison · 23/10/2012 20:06

And I really wasn't asking for parenting advice.

TheFallenMadonna · 23/10/2012 20:10

I was astonished at how much religion there is in primary schools. I went Ro catholic schools myself (so par for the course) and teach secondary, where the "broadly Christian" thing is routinely ignored. I assumed, as I had made the choice of a secular school for my DC, that it would be similar to the schools in which I have taught. I was wrong.
DH and I do have a religious faith, and our children go to church and believe in God, so in the grand scheme of things, I'm afraid it's not what I jump up and down about. But if I had no religious faith and was bringing my children up in that way, I think I would be...

solidgoldbrass · 23/10/2012 20:13

The one that always bewilders me is how come people who believe one of the more industrialised and commercialised brands of mythology get so arsey when their bullshit is equated with the more independent stuff. Why should belief in Jesus or Allah be any more inherently worthy of 'respect' than belief in pixies, Harry Potter or the Great Pumpkin? In the case of things like fairies, elves, ghosts etc I really can't see any quantitive difference at all in the stories. Fairies and pixies and belief in them have been around for as many centuries as Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, etc. Stories about elves and boggarts and all the rest of them are often moral tales or teaching tales. (And can be just as pernicious as stories of Jesus or Allah). The collective 'fairy tale' mythology would seem easy enough to spin into a money maker; there's quite a few places flogging fairy wings, pixie dolls, etc already.

Can anyone explain the difference?

Wallison · 23/10/2012 20:14

Grimma, I agree with what you are saying. It's the underlying assumption that there is a Creator, that there is some being to pray to etc. It's all done in the context of the Xtian faith.

Wallison · 23/10/2012 20:16

I think the difference is money and power, sgb. The established religions have plenty of both. That can buy you quite a lot of respect. And guns and armies.

solidgoldbrass · 23/10/2012 20:16

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exoticfruits · 23/10/2012 20:18

If I was SGB'S DC I would want to explore religion-she makes it so interesting whereas school would be boring. Anything that upset my mother to such an extent would be something to find out about!

exoticfruits · 23/10/2012 20:19

as I had made the choice of a secular school for my DC,

There are no secular schools.

Wallison · 23/10/2012 20:21

I've already had that discussion with my son about the Xmas Child thing. Reason being that we did it before I knew what it was all about, so I had to explain to him why we weren't doing it any more. He was suitably outraged and we're getting a present for that John Lewis appeal for kids in refuges instead this year.

GrimmaTheNome · 23/10/2012 20:23

I assumed, as I had made the choice of a secular school for my DC...

or rather, you (quite reasonably) thought that you'd chosen a secular school. As we all now know, there is no such thing as a secular state school in England (I'm not sure about Scotland and Wales or NI..the latter desperately needs them Sad)

It seems very slap dash to assume there are secular schools when there are not any.

So many people do it...its not 'slap dash', its because collective worship in school is such a bizarre anachronism that it simply doesn't enter many peoples thought processes when choosing a primary school. The faith schools are more than enough to have to cope with. And what difference does the assumption make in practice? Its not as though parents are given any choice about it.

wannabedomesticgoddess · 23/10/2012 20:30

In NI we have integrated schools.

Stupidly I thought they would have RE lessons teaching all different beliefs. And that would be it.

Sadly I was wrong. In these schools when the kids get to the age of a childs Holy Communion the catholic children get taken to a local catholic school for their prep. Leaving the others behind.

Im not quite sure what the point in an integrated school is if they are going to divide the children in this way.

exoticfruits · 23/10/2012 20:31

I would agree that that the GovDirect site ought to make it plain and Head teachers ought to have it clearly in the prospectus.

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